Stylus has something like 1000 kicks, 1000 snares and 500 hihats + loads of loops. Phew. Now that is a lot to audition. They all sound great, but it's a bit of a pain finding the right one, as they are not categorized.

Most of the sounds are aimed at hip hop/funk but you can find something for most styles though. The loops are mainly these 2 styles and Drum n' Bass for the faster loops. That's not too much of a problem as I usually removes the kick and snares and then you have tons of posibilities again. All the loops sound superb, although too much alike. The biggest problem with Stylus is that it's not multitimbral. Sure you can use all the drumhits in a loop in one instance, but once you want another snare you have to open another Stylus. That's a bit of a pain when you are sequencing. But Stylus RMX which comes out in September should take care of that. Can't wait. It'll turn a great ROMpler into a superb one. Eric's sounds are just the best.I don't give it as high scores as someone does, as I think it can get improved a lot, and I know it will be.I'm sure once Stylus RMX comes out I'll rate it 10 in all categories. And the upgrade will be free for everyone who buys it now. I'm sure it will be the king of drum machines then.Read more

Just picked this up. I find that the interface needs some work as well as the way Stylus works in general. For instance, you preview a loop from one list, and then if you want to use that loop in a "recycle" fashion, you have to find it and load it again from another list, then you have to go to the Windows start menu, find your way through that and dig through several more levels of folders to find a corresponding midi file to drag and drop on Stylus...Just to get control of the individual slices! Then do it all over and over again for each loop you want to use. This is honestly pretty bad. I have to wonder why they chose the Windows Start menu for the midi files and on a Mac it's in the Apple menu. Since I'm using FL Studio, I pointed FL's internal browser at the location of the midi files to make it somewhat less tedious. I'm surprised they couldn't figure out a better way to integrate the midi files than dragging and dropping them from the Windows Start menu.

As for the samples themselves, I didn't find more than a few that were inspiring after listening to everything from 120bpm down. I'm also surprised to find that some of the drum parts aren't separated properly. There are parts with, for example, kick and hi hat mixed into one slice with no way of separating it. I expect that when I slice up beats myself, but not from an expensive soundset. It also doesn't have multi-outs so serious mixing of these drums will involve a lot more work unless you output the drum loop to wave, reslice it and load it into a something like Battery. The way it stands currently, all drum parts will be on a single mixer channel.

Stylus will be a very good tool when they get these things sorted, most importantly, multi-outs for the slices. Right now, I'm thinking that I'm gonna preview loops with Stylus, and reslice them with Beat Creator to make Battery kits simply to get each part on it's own channel. I'm hoping that a future update wil address this serious shortcoming. I think it's almost impossible to mix drums on a single channel which gives Stylus a very large minus.

The one thing very unique about it is that you can take a beat from 120 bpm down to 75 bpm and it still sounds pretty good. There are also a few other nice tricks up it's sleeve which are demonstrated on the demo video.

Overall, I'd say it's a good value for the money depending on how you plan to use it. For me, I have to get each drum part on a separate channel so I'm looking for the best way to achieve this. If this gets added in a future update, I can probably deal with the dual menus for previewing, vs dragging/dropping midi files from another menu.Read more

Well when I first started playing around with stylus I was alittle dissapointed as at first it seems like most of the grooves/loops in it were really not my "cup of tea" but ...

When I started mixing it into tracks it became apperant that these grooves sit really nicely in a mix regardless of the musical "style" (no pun intended :)). Had I not actaully used it in some tracks I would have probably given it a 7 on sound, but in a mix ... it gets a 10. The sounds work well with some compression, reverb, delay etc.

Whats really nice about stylus is that you can drop a grove in on top of a mix to liven it up or start a whole new song based on one of the grooves ... it all works wonderfully once you start to make real music with it.

I like the simple interface. The ability to filter/process individual slices is nice; however I havent so far really wanted too.

I do wish there were more percussion type loops, there are some but I wish there were more.

I have ran into a few clitches along the way ...

1) when used on a track and you zone edit ... the names of the slices dont change like they do when playing directly from a keyboard ... maybe this is by design but I would have liked to see this for more feedback.

2) I had some problems in Orion with the imported midi files not playing back correctly but in cubase SX it works correctly ... Ive reported this to rich so it should be fixed in short order.

I think this unit could be a little less expensive but all in all Im happy I got it. :)Read more

Very Refreshing drum loops (though a bit "west coast-ish"), that are clearly inspirational. You should be able to extract any drum beat from the clear editing and amazing choice. However I would have like to see a more european feel in some of the loops, but I guess it can be tweaked with a combination of the interface and the midi groove extracted into the sequencer.

However (somebody correct me if I am incorrect) but the system of corresponding slices to midi slices is rather cumbersome. It involves first loading up the slices, then finding the corresponding midifile to load into the sequencer. Rather it should allow a preview of the loop, allow you to then load the slices, and then drag and drop the midi file like phatmatic. For this I cannot give a higher user interface mark and hopefully one day this feature will be added.

Stylus is very easy to use, the automation you can do on each "slice" of the main beat is amazing, especially since, you just load the midi file, the c.g. version of the loop, turn on zone edit, and tweak away.I have used stylus in new age type tracks, all the way to dance, to hip hip.then you throw in no license worries, they are going to update stylus, the customer service is very good....etc etc etc.and on a 667 with enough RAM, you barely even notice your using it.Read more